Today we return with Episode 3 of Craig Birchfield‘s thought provoking series, An Agnostic Moment. In this episode, Birchfield explores the Gospels.  Specifically, he explores the seeming contradiction contained in the first four books that form the basis of Christianity.

The contradiction is this; the Gospels, taken at face value, come across as an exercise in self-effacement by the church’s founders.  Rather than a religious how to or self-help book, the Gospels portray a most unflattering picture of Jesus’s disciples.

It is hardly the type of propaganda that one would produce were they to set out to start a religious movement.  The only plausible reason that the leaders of a religious movement would allow such an unflattering depiction of themselves to propagate is that perhaps they were not interested in starting a religious movement at all, but rather testifying with brutal accuracy to what they had seen and heard as they walked with the Messiah.

Enjoy!